If There Isn't One, Make One
A few minutes earlier.
On the sloping path that led toward the inn known as the treasure hunters' gathering place, the grumbling never once let up. Lupin's mouth was stuck a good ten feet out in front of her, and it had plenty to say.
"We're not children of the dark. What are they doing, holding a treasure hunter meetup in a place like this?"
She had followed the rough map sketched on the back of the business card, but the spot was so remote she was starting to doubt she'd come to the right place at all. And why were there so many hills? There was exactly one road climbing into the valley, and the peaks ringed it so tightly that the sun set early and rose late.
Ordinary people would have sensed the danger by now and turned back. You could hardly stake your life just for the sake of opening a treasure chest.
But Lupin hadn't seen a treasure chest in eight days. The withdrawal was getting worse.
However dangerous this got, could it really be worse than a treasure chest set down beside the eggs in the heart of a dragon's lair? She had hunted down countless chests, and she had never seen anything nastier than that.
"...Ah. There it is."
At last the meeting point showed itself in the distance. A small inn, or so she'd been told, for the scavengers who worked the abandoned demon district beyond the mountains. The innkeeper lived alone—an easy, thick-skinned sort who wasn't exactly well-off, yet treated every scavenger who came by with remarkable kindness. An old scavenger coming down the mountain had informed her, entirely unasked, that if she went she'd get to eat the innkeeper's house-special drinking snacks. He'd also added that slavers had been running wild around these parts for years, so she ought to get home as quickly as she could.
He'd looked so worried that she couldn't bring herself to admit she didn't have a home. She'd just smiled.
"Hm."
A small inn sat at the hill's edge, where the road simply stopped. Aside from how remote it was, the place didn't look like anything special. Still, something about it didn't sit right.
"Why is it so quiet?"
Lupin spent her days wandering places no one else set foot, so she had crossed paths with treasure hunters a few times. They were romantics. They loved drink and adventure, song and dance, and even with no money and nothing to show for it they drifted wherever the wind and the water took them, happy as could be—like those wild-mountain hermits who could beam over a stone stew with nothing but a pinch of chili powder in it.
And yet there the inn sat, lights burning, and silent.
"Did I come to the wrong place?"
There was no way a backwater like this had two inns, but misreading a map was practically routine when you hunted treasure chests. You were supposed to judge by the shape of the land, and honestly, mountains at night all looked the same. She'd already come too far to turn around, though. Figuring she'd stay the night even if this wasn't the place, Lupin knocked on the inn door with perfect confidence.
"Anyone in there? I came because I want to find some treasure~?"
A rustle, and then a man spoke from the other side of the door.
"Come in."
A voice that sat low and heavy. Not someone who had just woken up. A few shadows paced back and forth in front of the light, so they weren't all asleep either. As Lupin puzzled over the strange mood of the place, an old, uncomfortable memory flickered through her head.
Right. It's the first night of the retreat. Everybody's stiff and awkward, just picking at their drinks. Guess there's no senior here to break the ice and keep the cups full.
Ugh. The vibe is the absolute worst.
If it weren't for the treasure chest...
Telling herself she needed to find that chest with these people as soon as possible, Lupin slipped quickly inside and eased the door shut first—very carefully, in case anyone sleeping might wake.
"Hellooo—"
She had closed the door and was turning back inward to finish the greeting when—
Whoosh!
"Hup?"
From the blind spot beside the door, an iron bar came flying. Lupin rolled forward, slipped the flying metal, then sprang up and swept the room in a glance.
A hulk bigger than the door itself was blocking it, and thugs with short blades in their hands were closing in on her, slow and steady. The ashtrays on every table were heaped with butts, but there wasn't a liquor bottle anywhere. Signs of a card game, yes. A treasure map, no.
A trap?
The treasure hunters who were supposed to have gathered to hunt the Pirate King's treasure were, it seemed, nowhere to be found. Maybe the bartender who had left the card was in on it too? Or maybe Lupin had simply barged into a hideout where the villains were having a perfectly nice time. In that case, swinging an iron bar was fair enough.
On the off chance, she asked the people surrounding her.
"Um. This isn't the treasure hunter meetup, is it? If it isn't, I'll just see myself out."
At her question, a man in the corner burst out laughing. He rose to his feet and gave the revolver cylinder on the table a lazy little spin.
"Miss. You still don't get it? You're about to be kidnapped."
The man should not have said that. He had just handed Lupin a perfectly solid justification.
"So finding a treasure chest was a lie?"
"That's right. A trap we set to catch you and sell you off as a slave."
You're the thirtieth, the crew babbled as they pleased. The rest all went to fine masters, and so on and so forth. While they ran their mouths, Lupin drew a deep breath and took in the smell of the inn. Beneath the acrid cigarette smoke hung a raw, metallic tang of blood. Someone had already been killed before she arrived.
Seeing her expression go cold and hard, the boss sneered.
"Oh dear. Has our young lady finally woken from her dream?"
There were two things Lupin hated most in all the world.
One was mimics. The bastards looked far too much like treasure chests, and they even copied the treasure inside so faithfully it seemed real. Even Lupin had no way to tell whether a chest was a mimic until she put her hand inside to appraise it, and trap detection didn't work on them either. It had gotten so bad that getting bitten, then mincing the thing with a blade, had become her routine.
And the other?
"My treasure chest."
Bait chests. That feeling, when you had broken through some fiendish puzzle or trap only to open the chest at the end and find nothing inside. Maybe it was because her patience valve was already broken these days. Some gauge in Lupin's head was a breath away from bursting.
"Come on, miss. There is no treasure chest. Wake up already, will you?"
"Fuck. My treasure chest........"
"Pfft—hahaha! What's wrong with this one?"
At the boss's lead, everyone in the inn exploded into laughter. The place roared. Only Lupin was sunk in gloom. Every one of them was looking down on her, and so they missed the way she moved, smooth as a glide—
Click.
Cold metal touched the boss's temple. He tried to turn his head, and the thing pressed harder. Lupin, who ought to have been straight ahead of his eyes, was gone.
"...Huh?"
What were the odds that a young lady who looked like she did nothing but read novels and nurse empty delusions would, in the blink of an eye, appear at his back together with the revolver that had been in his own hand? The boss still hadn't grasped reality. The faces of his men, who had all seen it happen, supplied it for him.
What just happened?
I didn't see a thing.
She was inside a ring of blades, wasn't she?
In an instant the same sense of crisis swept through every mind.
...Don't tell me she's a bounty hunter!
"Bring it."
But Lupin's hand was faster than their shared realization. Krrick. At the sound of the trigger being taken up, the veins stood out on the boss's neck.
"...Whoa. Whoa. What?! Wait! Wait!"
"I said bring it."
"B-bring what?!"
"The treasure chest.... Bring it."
"Ha, haha. What are you talking about? Where in this backcountry is there a treasure chest—"
Bang!
Blood burst out with a wet smack and splattered the chests of the men standing close. It wasn't his head that had burst.
"Gyaaaah...!"
The boss clutched above his ear, where hot blood streamed, and click—the smoking muzzle leveled at his temple once more. The men nearby began edging toward Lupin, little by little. The brave ones were stepping up to stop a second shot. But had there been any hesitation in the shot just fired? There had not.
"Hey—hey, you crazy bastards! Stay still!"
If he let his men thrash around, only his own head would fly. Better to use the treasure chest as an excuse, send them outside, and call in sniper cover. It would drag things out, but at least he'd live, wouldn't he?
"I'll get it. I just have to bring it, right?"
"I'll give you one minute."
"One minute? That's a little short, isn't—"
Bang!
And so the boss's ear, already split in half, multiplied into two.
"Gyaaaah. I—I get it... agh... I get it. I said I get it...!"
Writhing in hideous pain, he gestured. Near the entrance. You lot. Go, fast, and do something—anything. That was the meaning. Just as the big crewman was stepping aside to clear the way out—
Bang! Another gunshot cracked.
The doorman collapsed in a heap with his brains spilling, and his body wedged the door shut tight. The panicked crew looked to Lupin as if begging her for an answer.
"Trying to run?"
You told us to go get a treasure chest.
"No. The—the treasure chest.... We'd have to go outside to fetch one, wouldn't we...?"
"Not fetch. Bring. You hid it."
"No, just think about it for a second! That doesn't make any—"
"Hey."
The voice of the young lady who had looked ready to fuss over the side dishes now belonged to a witch out of the old records, one who had cruelly slaughtered tens of thousands.
"Doesn't make sense? Ah. So I'm the crazy bitch with delusions~ is that it?"
Looks passed between the boss and his crew. But the crew were every bit as stuck as he was. Inside the inn there were sacks and nets for hauling people, but there was no treasure chest.
"Five seconds left."
An invisible clock went tick, tick. The crew's decisions split.
"Three."
Some bolted for the windows. Some readjusted their grips on their daggers. But every one of them already knew, dimly, how this ended.
"Two."
Lupin had never intended to let them live.
"One."
As she counted it, she kicked the boss in the back and hooked a finger on the trigger. With the edge of her other hand she fanned the hammer in rapid succession—pap-pap-pap. The heads of the three men nearest the window burst in a chain.
Several of the crew with daggers charged in, all or nothing. The bullets had to be spent, so now was the time to rush her. That judgment, at least, was excellent.
"Huff..."
But had they considered the difference in speed? Stabbing Lupin, who left afterimages like a serpent, was about as easy as grabbing the blades of a spinning fan without getting cut. The wrist of the first man to charge bent in a grotesque direction with a wet crack.
"Gyaaak."
The dagger that should have been in his hand was in Lupin's now. The pupils of the men coming after him shook as if the ground had split under them.
"R-run!! Run!!"
"Hyaaaah."
"Gyaaah."
"S-stay back!"
"Mom!!"
"Fuck, don't come. Don't come! Aaaagh!"
The screams that never broke were the solo. The sound of flesh being sliced, and of blood fountaining, was the chorus. Pandemonium. The boss, face-down, was crawling toward the inn's entrance, bleeding as he went.
"Please. Please. Please......"
"So this is the bastard who calls himself the boss."
With a hard wrench, his body was flipped over. The inside of the inn was a sea of blood, and Lupin was as clean as someone who had just stepped out of a bath. Sensing death, the boss howled.
"Why go this far.... If it's a bounty you need, you didn't have to kill all of us!!"
Lupin howled back, vomiting up an emotion fiercer still.
